Monday, August 22, 2011

Snuff/Ölüm Pornosu

Before starting to write about the book, let me tell you about a special situation in Turkey. The book is currently in court with some stupid censorship case suggesting that "it's pornographic and can harm the children's values". Of course, any parent wouldn't let his/her children read a book named 'Snuff' (Porn of Death in Turkish), but our government is incredibly concerned about the well-being of youngsters (!), so it feels responsible to protect the kids from books and films and such. So of course, the book is a best-seller now.

The book has the claim to show the ugly truth about the porn industry, but lacks in any deep observations about porn or sexuality and of course it has no ethical/moral concern (if you know Palahniuk more or less, you can guess that already I'm sure).The only thing the book tries to accomplish is to create a strong reaction from the reader. But the method is too obvious for it to create such a reaction, so at the end, you just stand there with the book in your hands, wondering why it was written in the first place.

'Snuff' is the recording of real-life scenes resulting in death and most of the time involving torture and rape. This book is a "snuff" because the porn queen Cassie Wright agrees to be with 600 men consequently in order to break the record. Everyone in the book, including Cassie, is very well aware that Cassie will die at the end, but no one cares about it. This gruesome expectation, with the lost child of Cassie are the main stories of the book.

The only interesting and entertaining thing about the book is the fun facts about porn and movie industry, like the fact that the first blow-up doll was ordered by Hitler in order to portray the perfect German race and Marilyn Monroe's long baths on ice in order to make her boobs more pointy and the fact that she made one of her shoes shorter in order to have a bouncy behind.

At the end, the book leaves the reader with nothing to account for and what's worse is that it isn't even entertaining. My advice for someone who wants to read Palahnuik would be to choose a different book.